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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26881735">Illusion and Dream</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlessedPicturesPresents/pseuds/BlessedPicturesPresents'>BlessedPicturesPresents</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Dreaming Wide Awake [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Alan Wake (Video Game)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Cunnilingus, F/M, Fantasizing, Masturbation, Non-Consensual Voyeurism, Oral Sex, Voyeurism</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-10-07</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-10-07</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 20:40:47</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Explicit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>3,780</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26881735</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlessedPicturesPresents/pseuds/BlessedPicturesPresents</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Wake writes, and Scratch follows to see where it leads.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Alan Wake/Alice Wake, Mr. Scratch/Alan Wake</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Dreaming Wide Awake [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1961245</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>8</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Illusion and Dream</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>About the tags:<br/>Scratch fantasizes about Wake, but they don't actually touch in this story. Also, I put a Non-consensual Voyeurism tag on this story, because technically there wasn't consent to it. I didn't add the Rape tag because it's only NC-Voyeurism, but I can if need be.</p><p>This is the first of a series I'm working on, and it's the nicest in the series. The entire series can also work as standalone stories, so don't feel bad if you don't read the rest.</p><p>The title comes from a Poets of the Fall song.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>In the long stretches of time that it took to coalesce again after the Night Springs, AZ debacle, Scratch had decided to lay low, and so in his spare time had taken up watching Wake’s cabin from afar, just in case. It wasn’t ideal, but he had nothing fucking better to do as the tendrils of his Darkness lazily knit themselves back together, and on top of that he had no choice; if Wake somehow managed to get away in the time it took Scratch to remember how to exist, he’d never hear the end of it. The dark forces counting on him would tear him apart, eat him alive, and that’d just be the starter course. It was boring, honestly, watching the writer putter around the cabin doing generally fucking nothing: he watched Wake pass out in the bedroom, dreams curling out through the windows like smoke and creating half-assed ghosts of memory around the cabin, watched Wake sleeping, reading, making coffee. Boring, stupid, human shit. But after a few visits, Scratch noticed: Wake was writing again. Actually writing, sitting there at his little typewriter, tip-tapping away. A mixture of excitement and something he wouldn’t designate as fear curled in the pit of Scratch’s being. The Writer, Writing, huh? <em>Wonder what he’s up to.</em></p><p>Scratch wasn’t sure how long it took Wake to figure out whatever the fuck he was working on. All he knew was, it’d been multiple cycles of Wake’s pathetic attempt at a schedule, and Scratch himself had finally fully healed from the drive-in fight. He didn’t know what changed, but suddenly Wake was in a hurry: he actually dressed for once, grabbed his light and the pages, and he was off, stalking out of the cabin carefully and throwing the flashlight’s beam around. Wake couldn’t see Scratch, hiding in the darkness; Scratch waited patiently until Wake finally started walking, amused that Wake really thought he’d see if anything was following him. Idiot, clinging to that idea of safety, that incorrect hope that at any point he could be safe, <em>here,</em> in the Dark Place.</p><p>Wake turned the light onto the pages of the manuscript he’d finished, inaudibly muttering the words to himself, loud enough for the writing to take shape and curl the Darkness into something else. The world changed, pieces at a time; a bridge, still cloaked in shadows; a sidewalk, to a building that didn’t exist before, standing alone despite it’s other-world counterpart being surrounded by other buildings, flora, fauna, human filth. Wake hesitated outside it, before apparently steeling himself and stalking in. Scratch didn’t hesitate, following as closely as he could without being noticed, without upsetting the delicate work of the writer’s words in play.</p><p>By the time they’d reached their destination, a dream-like few steps despite the reality of the building elsewhere needing more time and effort, Scratch had recognized it, pulling from the memories he shared with Wake. It was his NYC apartment, the one he’d shared with Alice. Scratch’s mood curdled somewhat. Wake was starting to truly understand how to shift this place to his whims, and this was clearly some kind of experiment that was going very well for him. That couldn’t be good. Wake happy was never something Scratch enjoyed witnessing, especially when it came at the expense of Scratch himself. For a vague moment, Scratch worried this was a trap, some elaborate cage that Wake had built knowing Scratch would follow. But Wake kept looking over his shoulder, casting the light around, looking for any stragglers, and that was enough to convince Scratch that Wake really thought he was alone. Who writes a trap for themselves, after all? So Scratch presses forward, watches Wake slowly open the door to his apartment, wondering deliciously what sad-sacky dollhouse full of mannequins Wake had fashioned for himself here.</p><p>But unlike Zane before him, it seemed Wake wasn’t going the full distance- no baby universes, no dolls of lover dearest to fill the void, touch him sweetly and whisper dirty promises in his ears. He hadn’t fully recreated his beloved wife in the apartment, and in fact hadn’t even fully recreated the apartment itself: it stood entirely empty, free of most of the furniture, every single one of the little touches that showed two people who loved each other had lived here once. His light licked around the wood floors and empty counters, despite the windows pouring in a nondescript white light, some ancient memory of a morning long past that didn’t quite have all the details colored back in. Scratch frowns, shifts into any shadow he can get his hands on, keeps out of the writer’s line of view as Wake walks to the back room, the bedroom, Scratch’s mind supplies as if to specifically annoy him, ignoring the rest of the offices. Wake’s on a mission now, committing, which Scratch appreciates. Finally, something interesting to watch.</p><p>Wake wanders the entirety of the empty bedroom twice, in a slow circle. He’s clearly distracted, grappling with something Scratch can’t name. Scratch leans in the hallway’s shadows, annoyed, waiting and watching again. Just as Scratch is about to write off this entire stupid exercise and leave, his time clearly wasted, Wake finds his spine again: stalking directly to the wall closest to where Scratch hides in the hall, across where his bed would have been in the past, and slams his back against it, sliding down to sit on the floor. He pulls out more pages, flashes them all with the light, mutters words angrily under his breath. Scratch watches as the words lift from the page, becoming real in the light: all of them, the same word. “Memory”. Scratch can hear Wake breathing heavily as he stares at them all, one at a time, and then finally discards the pages beside him and focuses on one of the words with the flashlight.</p><p>It explodes, and the air changes. Ghosts of furniture appear, though Wake is sitting where the bureau should have been; a bed, lamps, side tables. The lights in the bedroom and bathroom are all on, but outside the bright white has become darkness, glittering with window lights that aren’t really there, the faintest whisper sounds of a city. Somewhere in the bathroom Alice is chatting to him, and Scratch is suddenly awash with the memory: it was the night after some stupid gala. Right? A gala? Scratch frowns; he simultaneously does and doesn’t want to remember this, wanting both to know more and to carve the reality of his shared existence with Wake out of his head. He didn’t want to be human, oh so pleased with who and what he truly was, but now Wake’s humanity was flooding him: he’d been tired, he’d been buzzed on some truly delicious and expensive scotch, he’d been amused by Alice’s chattering, he’d been over-warm in the apartment. Scratch wasn’t moving, having slunk down to the floor in the hallway to match Wake, but he could feel the whispers of memory over his body: hands that weren’t truly his undoing a tie, pulling off clothing, like ghostly limbs he’d never owned. He remembers throwing his suit jacket on the bureau, chattering back to Alice, satisfied with the shape of his life that night..</p><p>The intrusion disgusts Scratch, but it’s too curious to push away, to fight. He doesn’t want to leave, he wants to watch where this is going. Clearly this night was important to Wake, clearly he was trying to reclaim something beautiful here, but Scratch couldn’t dig deep enough into the memory to recall where it was going. He just had to lay back and let the flow of it take him, overwhelmed with the suggestion of humanity overlaying his reality. It scares him, on some level. He knows that if Wake gets up, walks out here, he’ll be caught, and too off-kilter to fight back; he’s in danger here. He’s vulnerable, something he shouldn’t ever be, but he can’t bring himself to stop anyways, fascinated by whatever paltry scene from Wake’s memories and the way it seems to be taking control of his senses. He’s never experienced something like this before.</p><p>Vaguely, he’s aware he can hear Wake activating more of the “memory” words, hearing them explode and the Darkness rush to take their shapes.</p><p>Alice leans out of the bathroom. She’s not really there, Scratch and Wake both know this, but her perfume fills the room, her smile brightens it. Scratch, huddled on the floor in the hallway, just needs to close his eyes to see it, as if through Wake’s eyes; she’s a vision in the saucy, sparkling blue number with big side slits that she’d worn to the party, taking off her overly large earrings. The words on her lips actually start to take shape in Scratch’s ear, a loving, amused, just as satisfied tone.</p><p>“I can’t believe what some of the others were wearing,” she was saying. “I felt like such a superstar in there, this dress was <em>absolutely</em> overkill.”</p><p>Memory-Wake snorts. Scratch feels it in his chest. “Let’s be honest, you stand out at all these writer get-togethers. We’re just a bunch of washed-up schlubs dressing up to feel important for a night, and then you walk in, little miss superstar, and blow us all away.”</p><p>“Oh, <em>stop.</em>” Alice sounds sardonic but there’s a giggle implied, she’s clearly enjoying Memory-Wake’s attention. Scratch knows she leans back into the bathroom, hears the clink of her earrings in some jewelry dish for the night, and she walks out, right past where he’s slumped in the hallway. “They’re not - what did you say? <em>Schlubs?</em>”</p><p>“You’re right, that’s just me.” Her form is warm against him when he pulls her close. Scratch’s breath catches in his throat at the smell of her, perfume and skin and whatever she used in her hair, and hears Wake’s breath catch in the other room too. It’s stronger than he expected, and he’s clearly bowled over by it. He almost sounds choked up, and Scratch can’t even mock him internally because he feels it too, feels that longing and emptiness within him, that need for her. The way she fills the space against his body just so. The way she seems to make him remember what it’s all for.</p><p>Scratch snaps his eyes open, getting too far into the memory. He snarls under his breath, loosens his tie somewhat. Focus, focus. He’s letting Wake get the better of him; that won’t stand. Alice Wake was hot- really, she was, he appreciated her form in a way that wasn’t just informed by Wake’s memories and devotion- but she was still just a human. A plaything, a toy, something he was planning on destroying deliciously. Something he wanted to end just to see the look on Wake’s face. He didn’t care about her. He reasserted his existence over the memories of Wake’s, and felt it dampen the memories, felt the warmth and smell of her go from a scream to a whisper.</p><p>“Please,” Alice’s memory-ghost is saying in the other room. Scratch knows she rolled her eyes, both in her tone and from the memory of her face. Her delicate face, her delicate jaw, those lips still painted in bright red. He hears and feels Memory-Wake kiss her, hears and feels his Wake whimper, desperately lonely. It’s heady, and hard to focus, but he pushes through. “Is ‘schlubs’ even a real word? You’re spending too much time with Casey, baby.”</p><p>“I know, he’s killing my vocabulary.” Memory-Wake is smirking. Scratch wants to rip it off his face, tear into the room, pull Wake to his feet and scream <em>this isn’t real anymore, this is what you’ve LOST, give it UP you pathetic fucking waste.</em> But he can’t move, and if he were honest with himself, he doesn’t really want to. Let Wake fall further into his own dreams. Maybe when the moment’s right, Scratch can reassert reality onto Wake, too. He licks his lips, thinking of the shattered look on the writer’s face.</p><p>“Well, I don’t think you’re a schlub.” Alice leans closer against Memory-Wake, their ghostly forms overlapping. Scratch feels the heat of her again, the slinky little dress she’s wearing pushing up against his dress shirt, and fuck he actually wishes he could touch it, really feel it for himself. Fucking Wake’s fucking writing. <em>Hack.</em> “In fact,” Alice goes on, her voice lowering to what apparently passes for seduction to Wake, “I think you clean up pretty nice yourself, <em>bestseller.</em>”</p><p>Memory-Wake snorts, oblivious to the real Wake fizzling and opening another memory word in the background. “Don’t call me that, you might actually summon Barry.”</p><p>Alice laughs. Scratch loves and hates the sound of it. “Good point,” and now he can feel her hands working open his shirt, pulling the undone tie out of his shirt collar, and Scratch’s dick twitches uncomfortably from the heat, the closeness. Her fingers. He wishes her fingers would touch him, too. “I wouldn’t want him to interrupt us.”</p><p>“Oh?” Memory-Wake asks with a mock-innocence, and his hands slide down that slinky dress of hers to her hips, dragging over the sequins and sparkles. She’s practically wrapped in it, a luxurious present just for him. Scratch feels the memory of Wake’s hands pull enough of it up that the slits in the side are sliding up her hips, revealing all of her legs, and the black silky little panties she’s wearing peek out where the string that passes for a waistband curves over her skin. Memory-Wake plucks at it, kissing her deeply, and Scratch can taste the scotch on his breath, the champagne on hers, feel her little laugh into his mouth. “Got plans for me then, huh, superstar?”</p><p>Wake whimpers, and Scratch understands completely. With the taste of Alice Wake on his lips, his dick is starting to truly harden, now. He shifts, paws at his crotch in some attempt to dissuade the impending hard-on, whimpering in return. Memory-Wake ignores both of them, kissing Alice more deeply; he’s sliding those slits up further, settling his hands fully on her hips now; he’s sliding one thumb under that string now, rubbing a circle into her hip bone. She moans into his mouth. Scratch’s traitorous dick strains against his pants, and he snarls under his breath.</p><p>“Nothing I think you can’t handle,” Alice murmurs into his lips, voice husky, and it’s officially too much. Scratch tries to pull out of the memory entirely, but he can’t, and again he doesn’t truly want to- he wants to be the one pushing Alice back onto the bed right now, wants to be the one kneeling on the mattress between her legs, kissing her thighs and up against that black, silky excuse for underwear. Wants to feel her hands in <em>his</em> hair, instead of just Wake’s memory of her. Grunting, Scratch pulls his dick out from the painful cage of his pants, palming it half-heartedly. If Wake was going to force him to feel this, if Alice wouldn’t let him go? Fine. He’d enjoy it to the fullest. <em>Show me what you’ve got, wifey dear.</em></p><p>Memory-Wake pushes the dress out of the way, kissing and licking the fabric of her panties; one of his hands slides up under the dress to find one of Alice’s breasts, toying with it, palming her gently but firmly, and Alice bucks her hips up against him, thrusting into his mouth. She moans, and Scratch moans in reply. It’s so sensual, so utterly enticing, the overlay of Wake’s memory and the sounds in his ear, the sensations that he’s never felt washing over him like waves. Scratch can’t even hear Wake activating the words anymore, but he can hear Wake softly moaning too, and the gentle <em>slapslapslap</em> that means Wake had the same idea, and is now slowly teasing himself up with the memory of his lover’s touch, taste, smell. It must be unbearable for him, watching Alice like this, missing her so much. Feeling her again and knowing it isn’t real. Somewhere in the back of his mind, Scratch thinks it’s hilarious, but he’s too overwhelmed now to really lean into that, really consider anything except how it feels to roll those silky strings down Alice’s thighs, discarding her panties and kissing her soft skin again.</p><p>When Memory-Wake starts to go down on her, Scratch thinks he’s going to lose his mind. Her legs on his shoulders, her sharp and delectable taste filling his mouth and nose, her soft moaning, and just how it feels when her fingers twitch and pull in his hair- it’s more than he can bear. If this is what Wake’s on about, fuck, he might actually want an Alice of his own. Vaguely he’s aware that Wake’s speeding up, but it’s more important to him now that Memory-Wake is slipping fingers into Alice’s hot body, savoring her wetness, making her moan from somewhere deep in her chest. It’s sensual, it’s delicious, it’s- it’s too much.</p><p>Scratch tries in vain to pull out of it again. Tries to layer his own ideas onto it, but the strength of the memory means all his forced blood, tears, knives fade out and disappear, discarded without more than a second of thought. He tries to change it somehow, but Wake’s writing is working now, and the most he’s able to change is how it would feel to be the fingers in Wake’s hair, <em>be</em> the legs on his shoulders. How it would feel to have Wake’s stubble from a night without shaving against his thighs, instead of Alice. How it would feel to buck into his mouth, moan his name. Scratch would never admit this, but it was just as intoxicating, and he gets lost in the sensations between the memory and his own wayward attempts at fantasy. He can’t figure out what’s real, and what’s not, and what’s Wake’s stupid overwhelming memory. Scratch slides into it, fucking into his hand harder now, faster, desperate, letting the need and want wash over him in shadowy waves. The idea of that tongue on his dick is enough, with the warmth of her body against him, the friction of her skin against his.</p><p>Somewhere, he’s aware that Alice Wake is close. Memory-Wake is thrusting three fingers into her now as he laps away, nuzzling his face deeper between her soft thighs, moaning under his breath, and her body reacts, constricts around his fingers. Scratch vaguely knows that Wake is close too, can hear him panting and huffing, pace just as fast and needy as Scratch’s. Her skin is hot, and his skin is getting hotter, and he can’t breathe, he can’t breathe. It’s more than he’s ever experienced at once before, constant sensation crashing into his neutral way of existing, his numbed emotions, his entirely inhuman lack of feeling. “Oh,” he whispers, “<em>oh,</em>” and he doesn’t realize Alice is saying it too, each word as he does, her voice high and lilting.</p><p>“Alan, oh, god, <em>Alan!</em>” Alice screams and Scratch moans, completely in tandem. Their hips jerk up and Memory-Wake rides out her thrusting and thrashing, licking and sucking until she pulls on his hair softly to make him stop; he pulls his fingers out of her, licking them clean with a greedy smile as he makes eye contact with her, and Scratch hisses annoyance in the dark hallway, his hand covered in his own cum. He hears Wake cum too, in the other room, a short clipped cry escaping him right as he loses it. Scratch pulls a handkerchief out of his breast pocket, hissing under his breath as he tries to clean up the mess, hating every inch of this. His legs are weak, shaky, and he’s panting, and fuck he’s so fucking annoyed. This wasn’t supposed to be how this ended, this wasn’t what he was looking for. He’d thought Wake had found a way out, or was going to embarrass himself, and now here’s Scratch, crouching in a dusty fucking hallway, jacking off and humiliated again.</p><p>Softly, the memory in the other room is finishing out, starting to fade slowly, Alice murmuring something to her lover in the dark, and Memory-Wake is crawling up the bed towards her, but either Wake isn’t activating more of the memory or there’s nothing more to see. Scratch stands and listens in the dark, watches as the bright white replaces the view in the windows, watches as the bed disappears, and just listens to Wake pant, furious. He could go in there right now, break Wake’s fucking nose, pull out his teeth, punish him for this-</p><p>But then he hears Wake’s breath catch in his throat, and Scratch realizes: the writer is crying. Whatever he was looking for here ultimately just made that hole in his chest deeper, that emptiness more prevalent. Scratch smirks, a chuckle hiding behind his teeth. Whatever Wake was looking for here, he didn’t get it, either. They both suffered, and it looked like Wake was worse off for it, as always his own worst nightmare.</p><p>Scratch waits, and listens. Wake sniffles, sobs here and there, but he manages to pull his shit together after a few pathetic mewling moments. The urge to mock him openly, reveal himself and laugh in Wake’s face is strong, but this is a long game he’s playing, and he won’t fuck it up so soon into his turn. Scratch hears him shift and stand, crumpling and tearing pages; he doesn’t move until he hears Wake walking towards the hallway. The shadows in Wake’s old office are enough that Scratch can lean into them, waiting unseen as the writer stalks by, out the front door and into the liminal space that’s supposed to constitute the elevator. Scratch strikes, materializing in the bedroom at top speed. It still smells like sex somehow, and in the wreckage of Wake’s depressing life and memories, Scratch finds exactly one page still mostly intact. And surprise surprise, it’s one of the filthier ones, with Alice’s legs around his head. Scratch shakes the smell of her out of his thoughts. Any moment the building will disappear, and Wake might see him standing here, prize in hand, and what a fucking waste that would be.</p><p> </p><hr/><p> </p><p>Wake returns to the cabin, unaware. It takes him a full day before he finds the page, painstakingly smoothed out and neatly placed before his typewriter. With a thin black pen, Scratch has underlined and circled things he particularly liked, writing in shitty comments and lewd editing notes. At the bottom, a hasty scrawl in an approximation of his own handwriting: <em>You’re so close. See you soon, ladykiller.</em></p>
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